Tag: boys

I came across this picture book by chance and I am grateful for this wonderful encounter. To me, a picture book, no matter how good the written content is, also has to have a very strong visual component. If You Hold a Seed kept my eyes drawn to every detail in the illustrations and I was savouring the beauty of the artist’s vision and how well it manifested in simple, yet warm and touching images. We need more picture books like this! – where pictures really do the narration. As for the story itself – it’s full of hope, patience, believing, and succeeding. I give a solid ‘A’ to Elly MacKay for writing and illustrating this gorgeous children’s book. (Submitted by Mariya)

It’s been awhile since I’ve really loved a good book. Perhaps Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park was the last book that I finished and just wanted to hug. With Fredrik Backman’s Beartown, every page and every word, completely broke my heart into a million pieces.

Beartown is the name of a fictional small-town whose residents all pin their hopes and dreams on the local junior boys hockey team. We have Kevin, the team’s star player, who shoulders much of the pressure from his distant parents and all the citizens of Beartown. His best friend, Benji, is the boy with the sad eyes and a wild heart who tries to protect Kevin from anything that tries to break through their hockey bubble. Amat, whose mother Fatima works as a janitor at the ice rink, is the runty but speedy up and comer who has to battle being seen as a foreigner as well as deal with Bobo, the school bully. Then we have the coaches who constantly face the balancing act of taking care of their players and being forced to put the hockey club first. All of this buckles into a storm of emotions and events that eventually leads one teenager to raise a gun to the head of another and pull the trigger.

Beartown is filled with unforgettable characters that you will cry for, champion, be enraged at, and be inspired by. I could not put this book down, and I didn’t want it to end! A breathtaking fable of ambition, hope, and courage. (Submitted by Alan)